the current, he said, was not at all swift. Above the mouth of
this stream the main river is from one hundred to one hundred and thirty
yards wide with an even current and clear water. Sixty or seventy miles
above the last-mentioned branch another large branch joins, which is
possibly the main river. At the head of it he found a lake nearly thirty
miles long, and averaging a mile and a half in width, which he called
Mayhew Lake, after one of the partners in the firm of Harper, McQuestion
& Co.

"Thirty miles or so above the forks on the other branch there are
falls, which McDonald estimated to be from one to two hundred feet in
height. I met several parties who had seen these falls, and they
corroborate this estimate of their height. McDonald went on past the
falls to the head of this branch and found terraced gravel hills to the
west and north; he crossed them to the north and found a river flowing
northward. On this he embarked on a raft and floated down it for a day
or two, thinking it would turn to the west and join the Stewart, but
finding it still continuing north, and acquiring too much volume to be
any of the branches he had seen while passing up the Stewart, he
returned to the point of his departure, and after prospecting among the
hills around the head of the river, he started westward, crossing a high
range of mountains composed principally of shales with many thin seams
of what he called quartz, ranging from one to six inches in thickness.

"On the west side of this range he found a river flowing out of what he
called Mayhew Lake, and crossing this got to the head of Beaver River,
which he descended as before mentioned.

"It is probable the river flowing northwards, on which he made a journey
and returned, was a branch of Peel River. He described the timber on the
gravel terraces of the watershed as small and open. He was alone in this
unknown wilderness all summer, not seeing even any of the natives. There
are few men so constituted as to be capable of isolating themselves in
such a manner. Judging from all I could learn it is probable a
light-draught steamboat could navigate nearly all of Stewart Iver and
its tributaries.

"From Stewart River to the site of Fort Reliance,[10] seventy-three and
a quarter miles, the Yukon is broad and full of islands. The average
width is between a half and three quarters of a mile, but there are many
expansions where it is over a mile in breadth; however, in these places